News In Brief

June 15, 1984

New Delhi

90 arrested in the Punjab; temple drug kitty reported

Indian security forces arrested about 90 people in the northern state of Punjab, where hundreds of Sikh extremists were killed in an Army assault on a Sikh temple last week, the Press Trust of India news agency said Thursday.

The agency quoted intelligence sources as saying a large quantity of drugs smuggled from Pakistan was found in the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar, the Sikhs' most revered shrine. The drugs were said to have been used to buy arms.

President Zail Singh accused foreign forces Thursday of conspiring to provoke violence by Sikh extremists in India. The Press Trust quoted Mr. Singh, himself a Sikh, as saying: ''The incidents are a result of a deep-rooted conspiracy between some foreign forces inimical to India and certain misguided and antinational elements within the country.''

The Indian government had said Wednesday that Sikh extremists in Amritsar, led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, conspired with foreign countries to create a separate Sikh state and that the Punjab would have ''ceased to exist'' if the Army had not invaded the Golden Temple.